The Reception Theory

- Preferred Reading: The preferred reading is the reading media

producers hope audiences will take from the text.

- Encoders: Producers create texts with a PREFERRED READING

(the meaning that they want the audience to take from it) which the

audience then DECODE.

- OPPOSITIONAL READINGS:

When someone makes a conscious rejection or subversion of the

preferred meaning.

- NEGOTIATED READINGS:

When someone understands the meaning but it doesn’t relate them so

it is of no interest to them to decode it.

- Aberrant Readings:

When someone misreads or misunderstands the message the

producers are trying to portray.

Mode of Address:

Mode of address is the way in which the text “speaks to the audience.

It is a construction using a number of codes from all elements of the

text for example technical codes (camera, lighting, sound etc.) and

symbolic codes (language, colour etc.)

Producers will construct a particular mode of address in order to aim

their media text at a specific audience group.